Good evening.

We are so gla you could join us this evening for some seriously good book talk.

At least we hope you find it so.

This is Inside the Cove and I am your book loving host Ted Ayres.

Tonight's book was copyrighted in 1981, but I only recently learned of it thanks to a break room conversation with one of the talented staff here at PBS Kansas.

Thanks, Chris.

Tonight's book is Pioneer Women by Joanna L Stratton.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

This book is subtitled Voices from the Kansas Frontier, an that certainly is descriptive.

I would initially note that the story of how the book came to be written is almost as interesting as the book's contents.

Lilla Day Monroe was Johanna Stratton's great grandmother.

Monroe was born and raised in rural Indiana and she first came to Kansas in 1884.

As the frontier perio was drawing to a close, settling in Wakeeney on the barren western plains, she was an early witness to both the hardship and pleasures of pioneer life.

As Monroe watched Wakeeney develop from a quiet outpost into a lively community.

She was continually struc by the strength and resilience of the pioneer women she encountered there.

It was her early memory of them which led her 40 years later to work to record their lives and preserve their legacy.

Ultimately, Lilla Day Monroe solicited and gathered personal statements from 800 Kansas women.

Upon Lillas death in 1929, her daughter, Lenore Monroe Stratton, assumed the reigns of the project.

In the winter of 1975, Johanna Stratton was visiting her grandmother during a semester break from her studies at Harvard and exploring the attic of her grandmother's grand Victorian home in Topeka, the historic Potwin neighborhood, she discovered these personal memoirs carefully labeled and arranged alphabetically.

Stratton decided to retrieve the treasured narratives from their attic repository, and she returned to Harvard with the manuscripts in hand, and she set out to rediscover the brave but forgotten lives of a generation of women who had the determination and tenacity to conquer loneliness, withstand privations, and overcome long odds.

It took Stratton nearly five years of reading and editing the remembrance of others to complete her book.

And we are the better for it.

I think it best that I let the women tell you their story directly.

I have a number of commentaries to share, but in the interest of time, I'm only going to do one.

This is a story of Mrs. A.S. Lecleve, written by her daughter.

“My father had no sooner gotten out of sight than my mother knew that the stork, being an undependable sort of bird, had decided that it was time to leave his precious bundle.

Now, that was a terrifying situation alone with two babies one four and the other 18 months.

Not a neighbor that could b called no doctor to be gotten.

So my brave mother got the baby close together on a chai by the bed, water and scissors.

And what else was needed to take care of the baby.

Drew a bucket of fresh water from a 60 foot well.

Made some bread and butter sandwiches, set out some milk for the babies.

And when Rover had orders to take care of the babies, he never let them out of his sight.

For at that time, any bunch of weeds might harbor a rattlesnake.

So at about noon the stork left a fine baby boy, my father arrived home about dusk with a big load of wood and congratulated himself that he would at least have some wood to burn on very cold days.

My mother having fainted a number of times in her attempt to dres the baby, had succeeded at last.

And when my father came in he found a very uncomfortable, but brave and thankful mother-- thankful that he had returned home with the precious wood and that she and the baby were alright.” Tonight's book has been Pioneer Women by Joanna L Stratton.

If you enjoy Kansas history, I suggest that you will find this book of value and a worthwhile read.

I certainly did, and I highly recommend it to you.

Goodnight and see you next time here on Inside the Cover.